(2 of 7)
More disturbing is the potential scope of the disease, based on the rate of transmission and the varying incubation period, which some health authorities think may last as long as ten years. More than 1 million Americans are thought to be infected with the virus, and more than 90% of them do not know it.
The fear of deadly plague seemed to die out after the control of polio in the early 1960s, but the word has been applied to AIDS. In Africa it is a heterosexual disease rapidly infecting the heart of the continent. Around the U.S., health officials are calling for enormous increases in AIDS testing for pregnant women and even for couples applying for marriage licenses. More than any measures, however, health officials at every level are pleading for what is very nearly a social revolution. Says U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Otis R. Bowen: "I can't emphasize too strongly the necessity of changing life-styles."
To America in the '80s that means rescinding the sexual revolution of the past quarter-century. Five years ago, concern about herpes caused a similar scare, one that seems trivial by comparison. Now "safe sex" are the watchwords. The mechanics of copulation have become public to a degree unthinkable only a year ago, with detailed discussions in the press and on television of bodily secretions and sexual protection like condoms.
In a shrewd Washington Post column, Novelist Erica Jong (Fear of Flying), formerly a high priestess of sexual abandon, put the dilemma succinctly: "It's hard enough to find attractive single men without having to quiz them on their history of bisexuality and drug use, demand blood-test results and thrust condoms into their hands. Wouldn't it be easier to give up sex altogether and join some religious order?" With a little emendation the same plaint can be made by men. "You think twice," observes a 28-year-old male / patron of Lucy's, a crowded singles bar on Manhattan's West Side. "If sex is too easy, I just won't take it."